


you are my sunshine, my only sunshine

by contagiousiridescence



Series: grey skies [2]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Canon Universe, F/F, Fluffish, Lena POV, One Shot, SuperCorp, i still don't know what I'm doing with this, on the hunt for Kara Danvers because where the hell did she go, parallel fic, post 3x17 technically but could feasibly be post 3x18 too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 12:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14671272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contagiousiridescence/pseuds/contagiousiridescence
Summary: Lena Luthor can't cope with her emotions, but she tries.





	you are my sunshine, my only sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> So this is basically SilverVivi_08's fault. I couldn't get the idea of a Lena POV out of my head, so here it is in all of its scatterbrained, messy glory.

At times like these, when the world outside is shut away by the walls of her office and muted through the thick window glass, Lena thinks she might have found the edge between peace and chaos. In here, she is safe. The world outside will rage without her, stalking the corners of the office like a panther ready to pounce if she dares open the door or slide the window open. In here, she can pretend that nothing else exists beyond the steel of the L-CORP tower. Just her, tipped back against the chair, and the harsh glow of her laptop screen reflected against the slick glass that she stares out of, watching as the velvet night twinkles with clusters of starlight.

She sees herself in the glass, too.

Lena turns the chair away from the window. Out there, the world waits for her. It seethes, rumbling its displeasures and its impatience, full of atrocities and injustice ready to taunt her. Though she is safe in here, tucked away at midnight in an office she hasn’t left since five yesterday morning, she can feel it mocking her. The world will not let her forget what awaits. The moment she leaves the protection of this little bubble, Lena will feel it preying down on her again, sinking into her heart and soul with the same claws that had embedded into her skin since the day she was born. The claws that bear the name _Luthor,_ of which she will never be rid.

The glass in her hand is two fingers full of bourbon. She swirls it, staring at the amber liquid as it nearly flies over the rim. On the desk is a pretty, half-empty crystal decanter.

Lena watches the whiskey for a moment more and thinks about how much she hates bourbon.

There’s a small flicker of movement from her laptop. Lena looks up at the screen and reads the beginnings of a long-winded email from one of her investors. It’s regarding the conference call they’d had earlier today, and after a few minutes Lena finds she _doesn’t fucking care_ what Dr. Corville has to say about L-CORP’s proposed joint venture with another engineering firm for the demolition and renovation efforts of the city’s damaged infrastructure. It’s not his company, she wants to remind him. Her fingers itch over the keyboard, ready to release the scathing reply already formulating in her head.

She doesn’t. Instead, Lena shuts the laptop and hangs her head into one hand, the other still gripped around the glass of bourbon.

If Sam was here, she’d know exactly what to say. She had been an angel when it came to smoothing the ruffled feathers of the old men who tried, time and time again, to pry the control of the Luthor assets out of Lena’s hands. Sam would have gently persuaded him with an elegant response, and Lena wouldn’t have to worry about preserving her influence over a board of directors who resisted every slight change in the company’s direction.

But Sam isn’t here. Sam is gone.

Sam is Reign, and despite Lena’s best efforts, most likely as dead as the other two Worldkillers with each passing day.

Lena takes a long swing of the bourbon and doesn’t flinch when the floral bitterness stings the back of her throat.

She tried.

She failed.

And it cost her everything.

 

Lena stares down into her glass. She doesn’t cry. The tears have long faded, dried up behind her eyes and years of countless breakdowns. Instead, there’s a hollow quiet that lays thick over everything else she feels. It’s restrictive, like a vise slowly squeezing around her chest. The last time she cried in earnest was two weeks ago; it was messy and explosive and wholly unfamiliar in its intensity. Lena Luthor didn’t _explode_. She wasn’t fierce and furious in her anger. She was cold, methodical, deadly calm and composed in her wrath. Supergirl was the one whose anger was physical and blinding, like a punch to the gut and an eruption of white-hot flames all at the same time.

Lena was ice, a blade, the curved scalpel that cut in neat, deep lines and left a trail of frostbite in the aftermath. Yet somehow she’d only managed to just bleed herself dry in her anger, and it left her where she was now, slumped over a desk and a cup of whiskey that she hated, with the face of the woman who ignited her fury still branded behind her eyelids.

Supergirl.

It has been two weeks. She tells herself, every day, not to think of it. Not to replay the scene in her mind like a videotape on constant repeat, flooding her thoughts with the bile and venom that they’d spat at each other. The secrets and the lies that reduced everything to ash. A clash of titans, if there was any true parallel, with all of the same devastating ends. Only the ruined landscape isn’t through the streets of National City, but the brick and mortar of her heart, and it lays in desecrated shambles while she’s left to sit in the rubble and wonder what the hell she’s supposed to do with the pieces.  

Lena massages her temple with the tips of her fingers.

Stop thinking about it.

Stop it.

She doesn’t, and takes another drink of bourbon. The vise squeezes tighter.

 

 

The _click_ of her office lock draws her attention. When she looks up, slightly bleary eyed, the door eases open and the face of a middle-aged man peeks in at her. Though he doesn’t appear surprised to see her inside, there’s a sheepish apology in the janitor’s face as he ducks away to leave.

“It’s alright, Robert,” she calls, and a moment later he reappears in the doorframe. Lena offers him an empty smile and stands. “I should be leaving, anyway.”

He mumbles out a soft goodnight and waits for Lena to gather her things.

She puts away her blueprints and turns off her laptop. The little clock in the corner reads ten minutes after midnight, and briefly Lena thinks that this is the earliest she’s gone home since her fight with Supergirl. She won’t get any sleep, she knows, but the thought of lying in bed for a few extra hours is comforting at least.

Of course, as Lena steps out of the elevator and into the underground garage, she already knows she won’t be going home tonight. Not yet, anyway. The world is waiting for her, hungry, ready to tear into her as soon as she makes it outside again. Lena had once been able to withstand it; she was a force against the howling of the wind, against the sneers and the sabotage, a pillar of strength and resilience that her brother was never able to topple. The world could claw at her all it wished, and she would bear the marks of its talons with pride.

Somehow, at some point, it managed to sneak under her defenses and bloody her stronghold. Perhaps it was weakness. Perhaps she was losing her grip.

As Lena gets into her car, she thinks it’s neither.

It’s the loss of something deep, something irreplaceable, and the void it leaves behind is filled instead with the vitriol she’d once been able to endure. Since the day her mother died, Lena had no one but herself. She was the only person dependable to count on, the only one she could trust to get the job done the right way. Or, a right-enough way. She only has herself, and two years ago, that had been enough.

It isn’t anymore.

Lena drives down the street. For a bustling city, there is a near-magical quality to the stillness that envelopes the outside. She still sees people, can hear the muffled tones of voices through her car windows, but the barrier of her vehicle separates her enough from the world to resist the crushing weight that threatens to consume her. The citylights are soft and easy on her tired eyes. They fall in rhythmic stripes over her dashboard, a mixture of yellows and reds, as her car coasts down the road. She can see some of the mangled frames of broken buildings from Reign’s rampages as she turns the corner. Lena recognizes the shattered asphalt that Supergirl had been slammed into, and the sight of it chips away at her resolve. Those claws press against her throat, and though the turmoil that drives them is still held at bay, Lena feels it growing heavier, sharper, and she knows tonight will be another night spent wallowing through hard liquor instead of sleep. Anything to numb that horrible, stabbing pain that finds her in the dark of her bedroom.

But as her car pulls to a stop fifteen minutes later, it’s not her own apartment building she finds herself outside of. It’s a smaller building, a bit more homey and a little less extravagant than the one she lives in. There won’t be guards posted in the lobby or servicemen waiting in the lift. Which is perfect for Lena, because she certainly doesn’t need any witnesses to the visit she’s about to make.

The same visit she’s made nearly every night this week, and almost every night the week before.

Lena climbs out of her car and breathes against the chill of the night air. It burns her lungs a little and stings at her eyes with cold, but she braces against it in the collar of her woolen coat and suppresses the shiver that attempts to ripple out of her. She hurries for the double doors of the apartment complex as if the world is chasing her back inside.

The route is mindless for her. She drifts up the stairs instead of opting for the lift; she thinks the activity of the stairsteps will help clear her mind, and maybe convince her not to finish the trip to the top. Maybe tonight she’ll come to her senses and just go home like she’s supposed to.

Of course, when Lena finds herself at Kara’s door, she realizes the thought is pointless.

 

Lena doesn’t really know why she’s there. Or, maybe she does, but she doesn’t want to admit it. Kara’s been avoiding her for days-- for weeks. Texts go unread, her calls unanswered. She can sometimes catch glimpses of Kara at CatCo, but the young reporter is elusive in the same way dreams seem to be the morning after. Sometimes tangible, other times just a ghost.

It’s painfully obvious Kara doesn’t want to speak to her, or even see her, but Lena is a stubborn woman.

A stubborn, broken woman.

Lena sighs. She reaches out and touches the wood of the door, knowing that Kara won’t be there tonight. She hasn’t been for a long time, and Lena thinks maybe Kara is staying with Alex, away from where Lena can find her. And as much as the thought alone hurts, Lena is almost glad for it. If Kara wasn’t home, then she wouldn’t know of how pathetic Lena had become in the time since her fight with Supergirl. She wouldn’t know the unbearable desperation that’s sank into Lena or the wretched self-loathing that spurs her to stand on Kara’s doorstep and cry to the empty apartment beyond it.

She can handle Supergirl’s judgment. Her distrust. It is a burden she can bear, because she’d prepared herself for it when first moving to National City. She’d been saddled with it by virtue of name alone, and though she’s labored endlessly to remedy the history, to bridge something between her name and the House of El, she expected it to some degree. That doubt would follow her everywhere like her own personal poltergeist. Likely to her deathbed, even.

Lena could handle it. As wrenching of a feeling as it was to have all of her efforts to rectify the Luthor’s terrible legacy swept away in a hurricane of anger and mistrust, she would survive.

But she can’t handle Kara’s judgment. Not when Sam is dying and a part of Lena is dying with her. Not when Kara is the only person Lena depends on to keep herself from falling into the trap of her own name.

It’s the one thing she can’t do on her own.

Lena breathes deep. There’s pressure behind her eyes and in her chest. It doesn’t go away, but settles in her body and waits for her to crumble.

Not yet, she tells herself. Not here.

She knocks. She can hear it echo in the abandoned room beyond, and she takes a moment to think of what it might look like without Kara’s presence. Cold, she thinks. Unwelcoming. Something Lena never thought she’d connect to Kara. Even when Kara was mad at her in the past, it was a hot, bubbling kind of anger, retaliatory in nature instead of withdrawn, the way Lena is. The yawning emptiness is nothing like Kara. It reeks of finality, a place she can’t move back from.

It feels like death, and Lena mourns it the same.

To lose Sam and Kara in the same breath is an agony twisted so deep in her breast that Lena nearly stumbles against the door from the force of it. With a hand still pressed against the wood to steady herself, she knocks again and calls, “Kara?” It’s surprisingly even, unlike the storm brewing in her chest. She says it despite the knowledge that it won’t be answered, because the sound of Kara’s name alone is peace in and of itself. She says it because there’s still the sweetest hint of hope on her tongue as Kara’s name falls from her lips, even if that hope will sour in her stomach when another night passes alone and ignored.

Lena pauses against the door. She hears a soft tapping from inside, growing steadily closer.

It isn’t until she hears the lock sliding back that Lena realizes someone is in the apartment, and suddenly she’s frozen in place.

The door opens.

At first, Lena doesn’t react. She stares at Supergirl almost in disbelief, because out of all people she expected might be on the other side of that door, the Kryptonian who’d snarled in her face two weeks ago wasn’t one of them. Fully suited and caped and otherworldly, as always. The crest emblazoned over her chest is a warning that demands her attention.

“Oh,” Lena hears herself say. The sound of her own voice is jarring in the silence of the hallway and the darkness of Kara’s apartment. She can feel her guard springing up, ready to brace against Supergirl again if she must. The superhero doesn’t do anything but look at her. There’s fatigue touching the edges of her expression and weariness stooping at the strong sculpt of her shoulders. If Lena thinks back, she’s not sure she remembers a time she’s ever seen Supergirl this… tired. Physically beaten and exerted beyond her threshold, yes. But this is different; there’s something missing, like a candle flame has burned itself out without anyone noticing. The harrowed exhaustion lurks somewhere in the depths of her soul, not in her body. Lena can see it in her eyes and tries not to think about how it mimics the weight in her own heart.  

Lena glances past her for a moment. Kara’s apartment is dark, with no signs of life other than the statuesque woman in front of the door. It looks unoccupied and lonely.

“Is she home?” Lena asks.

Something flickers across Supergirl’s eyes. It’s gone in an instant, but Lena wonders at it still. The animosity from their last encounter is absent. There’s no heat, no mounting hostility, no bristling. Supergirl is drained of the fight, and Lena thinks she almost prefers the anger.

“No,” she says simply. Her voice is strained. “She’s not here.”

Lena doesn’t know if she’s glad or not for it. Still, she doesn’t leave.

“Will she be home soon?” she asks, though she doesn’t know why. She had long lost the expectation that Kara would be there, or  that she’d even stick around to listen to what Lena had to say. She couldn’t deny that Kara had chosen Supergirl’s side and willingly spurned their friendship along with it. Yet the thought of returning home, of facing the hateful world outside, keeps her at the door.

Supergirl looks away. She stares off at something inside, and Lena takes this moment to watch her closer, trying to figure out the darkness Lena recognizes in her and why she’s holed up in Kara’s abandoned apartment. Why, after two weeks, this woman is suddenly empty of the fire that had burned the bridge between them.

“I don’t know,” is her answer.

Lena exhales softly. Of course.

Supergirl looks back at her. When they meet gazes again, Lena decides the darkness she sees is a trick of the shadow that spills around them.

The other woman must realize the strangeness of the situation, or at least the curiosity within Lena, because a moment later she explains in a soft voice, “She lets me stay here, sometimes.”

Obviously. Lena didn’t take Supergirl to be the kind to randomly break into a friend’s apartment. She doesn’t pry into the matter, because it means nothing to someone who has no business at Kara’s front door, anyway.

When Supergirl steps away, the door ajar in silent offering, Lena finds herself speechless. It’s not an empty gesture, and it’s certainly not a subtle one. Days ago, Lena would have turned around and left. Maybe even earlier today, if she’d found herself at Kara’s apartment and Supergirl was wordlessly asking her inside, Lena would have said nothing and went home.

But tonight, it’s different.

Tonight, she’s tired.

Tonight she doesn’t care as much.

Supergirl leaves the door. She treks through the apartment as easily as if she owned it and stands by the window, her back to Lena. Something must be on her mind, Lena assumes. Though she knows Supergirl can hear her, there’s no reaction from the Kryptonian when Lena finally steps over the threshold and into Kara’s apartment. Nor when she closes the door, or sets her purse onto the countertop littered with random bits of paper.

There’s a strangeness to the air. It reminds Lena of her little bubble of an office, cut away from the world by the walls that enclose her in a protective barrier. It’s not quite the same here, either because it’s Kara apartment, or because the woman Lena has fought so much to erase from memory over the past two weeks is standing a room away, but Lena takes a small amount of comfort in how her existence is suddenly restrained to this room and this room only, and the world beyond can forget her for a little while longer.

Or maybe it’s the feeling of being close to Kara in some small, insignificant way that eases the pain just a bit.

Supergirl closes the window and turns back to her. It’s still dark, and Lena notices the blanket on the ground for the first time.

“Did I wake you?” Lena asks, looking to the lights that don’t appear to have been used for quite a while. There’s dust over the bulbs that she can see in the gentle moonlight that illuminates the kitchen.

Supergirl follows her gaze. With a shake of her head, she moves for a nearby lamp and switches it on. “I was out late,” she says as the soft light flushes the living room. She doesn’t turn them all on, and Lena finds herself grateful that the other woman didn’t see fit to blind them both with sudden, bright lights. It’s enough just to get by, which is all either of them really need.

“As was I,” Lena responds, nodding, as if it weren’t apparent. She makes her way for the cushioned chair that’s farthest from the couch, where she assumes Supergirl had been attempting to sleep.

The hero stands in place for a moment. Lena wonders if this was a mistake, and is about to excuse herself when Supergirl maneuvers back toward the couch and picks up the throw blanket on the floor.

They don’t say anything. Lena doesn’t want to speak-- she has nothing to say, nothing to discuss. No, that wasn’t true. Lena has everything to say and all of it to discuss, but the words are tucked so deeply within herself that it takes more effort to reel them back out than it does to just sit and stew in them instead. Even if she wanted to talk to Supergirl, the words are slipping away from her, darting out of her grasp like silver fish. There’s too much to say, so she says nothing at all.

The apartment is quiet. Supergirl’s eyes are closed, so Lena takes a moment to gaze around, remembering how it felt to exist in this space and be welcomed at the same time. When she’d been here before, beside Kara, she’d discovered what it meant to feel complete. Whole. It wasn’t a feeling that startled her all at once, but it had crept through her every time she passed into Kara’s home until, for the first time in her life, she found herself content.

Blissful.

Lena brushes her fingers against the chair arm. There are so many happy memories here. So many emotions that were never touched by the taint of her name or the expectation she shouldered from her family. Friendship, family, and love-- all things that Lena got to experience by the light of Kara’s guidance and endless patience. They were new, and terrifying in their potential, but Kara had been gentle. She was a foundation that Lena could lean on when the ground beneath her feet felt too shaky to stand. She was a warmth that demanded nothing in return. It was freely given, despite all that Lena had to build herself to be under a name that tore into her at every turn.

Here, she was just Lena, and she was happy.

Was, she repeats to herself. It’s a bitter thought, and it’s followed by a sudden, powerful rush of remorse. It curdles in her stomach and she has fight the urge to wrap her arms around herself and curl into the chair.

Instead, she looks to Supergirl.

Her eyes are still closed, but now they’re pinched. Her jaw tightens, and even in the faint light, Lena can see the woman’s chin quiver ever so slightly. Something glistens on Supergirl’s cheek, and as Lena watches, she suddenly becomes aware that the superhero across from her is _crying_. There’s no sound, but she sees it in the tremble of Supergirl’s shoulders and the way she turns her face away. The tears glitter as they fall onto the blanket bunched in her lap. It’s a desperately human thing, so raw and vulnerable and...

There’s something else.

Lena stares.

Secrets, Lena knows, can be a poison. They can leech into a soul and decay trust and faith until nothing is left but a husk. Lena had once thought herself immune to it; she was, after all, born of secrets and lies, fed them through her childhood and groomed into adulthood with them both still on her lips. Lena did not shy from secrets, for despite their poison, they still served a purpose that was, on occasion, more righteous than not.

Lena has many secrets. Some of them are about Kara, if Lena is honest with herself, though she can’t bear to face them most days. There are thoughts and feelings that have bled into Lena over the past two years that remain unnamed, shoved far into the dusty corners of her soul until she can pretend they don’t exist. When she was faced with James, that sweet, loving boy, Lena had taken those thoughts and feelings and rewrapped them in his name, so that at least part of her life might make a little sense. Might bring her some sort of satisfaction.

Time feels suspended as Lena continues to stare. Perhaps she has always known, to some degree. Perhaps this was one of those secrets that Lena had trapped in the shadows where she wouldn’t have to admit what it entailed. She had never felt the need to pursue whatever this was, this inevitable knowledge that she doesn’t want, because Kara had been enough-- Lena hadn’t needed anything more than everything Kara already was. The secret could stand to be a forgotten myth when Lena had no use of it. But now, it is candled before her very eyes, and Lena cannot deny it any longer.

And with that, she cannot deny the others, either. The secrets surge up through her, demanding and loud and unable to be ignored.

“Supergirl?” she whispers, some mixture of alarm and denial coloring her voice.

The superhero stiffens a little. Slowly, Supergirl opens her eyes and wipes the shining tracks from her cheeks and chin. When she clears her throat and looks back at Lena, the clarity that bolts through Lena’s chest is painful and electric.

Those eyes are full of sorrow. Regret. A world destroyed, and another verging on the same fate. They are eyes of lost love and shattered hearts and deeply scarred hope.

They are Kara’s eyes.

Lena doesn’t know what to feel.

Does she feel?

“I should go,” she says. There’s a tidal wave rearing up above her, towering high and ready to break over her head at any moment. It threatens her as she rises from the chair, suddenly unsteady. The room is no longer a bubble of comfort and protection, but swimming in secrets and lies and truths that pierce Lena in the blue of the eyes looking back at her.

Supergirl says nothing.  

Lena stumbles her way out of Kara’s apartment, chased by a panic that nips at her heels. She yanks the door open. That vise in her chest is gripping her lungs at full-force, and she finds as she crosses into the hallway that she can’t breathe.

She can’t breathe.

Her vision blurs.

She can’t breathe.

And then, before the door can close behind her, Lena hears it.

The sound is a high-pitched, gutting wail shattered around gasps for breath. It’s a broken sound, and it drives knives through Lena’s chest when she struggles to inhale. 

Lena closes the door.

Her hand clasps around her mouth, stifling the harsh air that forces out from her. She leans against the door and shuts her eyes. The violent sob wracks her body, shaking in her lungs and in her shoulders. Still, she suppresses it behind her palm, even as her own tears trek down the sides of her face and into the collar of her coat. The wave she’d ran from in the apartment crashes down onto her without mercy, cutting through her cries with a visceral pain and choking her of air. The world outside is roaring in her ears and tearing through her heart with claws of a different name.

It was Kara. It was always Kara.

  
  
  
  
  
  


 

There comes a point in someone’s life, when faced with the ugliest of truths, when they are given a choice.

In her family, it was the measure of their existence that wrought such a choice; the choices of others bearing down on the remaining legacies, forcing their hand in one extreme or another. Hers were always scrutinized, judged, and sentenced before she often had the chance to make them-- so some were made for her, despite her best efforts.

Like Sam and Reign.

Lena keeps herself pinned against Kara’s door. The tears in her eyes are molten as they slip away. She had a choice with Supergirl and Reign. Supergirl had a choice, too.

They both chose wrong.

And suddenly Lena finds herself faced with another one, one she never thought she’d have to make again after Sam. There is more to this, to everything, now that this new facet of truth has been shoved in her face. There is more than just misunderstanding and secrets and unbridled anger.

There has always been more. Lena was just too afraid to think of it.

She doesn’t think, now. She just chooses.

  
  


 

The cries have not lessened. When Lena enters the apartment again, the sobs are wild, uncontrolled. She moves quickly, this time out of steadfast determination instead of the panic that had herded her away.

Supergirl is crying into the blanket open-mouthed and unraveled. Lena tugs it from her and tosses it aside. Without thinking, Lena folds her arms around Supergirl’s-- no, Kara’s-- neck and pulls her close, one hand on the back of Kara’s blonde head and the other gripping into the red silk of her cape. She feels small in Lena’s arms, so unlike the untouchable presence Supergirl usually exuded.

Kara tucks her face into Lena’s collarbone, still crying.

Lena holds her tight and doesn’t let go.

Time leaves them for a while. Lena doesn’t know how many minutes pass, if they pass at all, by the time Kara’s hiccups fade into soft, slightly ragged breaths. They stay like this for a while; Lena curled around Supergirl and Kara and whoever else Lena might have yet to know.

Kara moves back after a few moments, but Lena is reluctant to let her out of arm’s reach.

“I’m sorry,” Kara breathes. The words are simple, but they burn with such vast integrity that it almost feels like enough. Lena can feel the weight of Kara’s regret in the glimmer of her eyes-- Supergirl’s eyes-- and the thickness of her voice. It’s a sorry for many things, for everything, for mistakes past and potential failures. Lena sees the depth of it in her eyes, bared from the bottom of her soul. It won’t change what happened, but it’s a start.

Lena brushes the back of her knuckles against the side of Kara’s face, where a lock of gold hair is caught in the drying tears. She moves it away and doesn’t break Kara’s gaze. Those secrets of hers are still hammering away in her chest, thundering in her heart. “I know,” Lena says. “I am too.”

There’s a little more shine in Kara’s eyes now, Lena realizes. Whatever had been dim in Supergirl was slowly, achingly, eking back. It might be a while until the Kara she knows makes a full recovery from whatever darkness had hidden her away, but Lena knows: Kara will come back. Eventually.

“Do you want me to stay?” Lena asks, even if the grip Kara has on Lena’s coat is evidence enough that she does. Still, if Kara wished her to leave, she would. It would hurt, but she would.

Kara doesn’t answer for a while. She looks away, as if she’s searching for something. A thought, maybe, from the faraway glaze that overcomes her for a moment.

“I need to tell you something,” she says suddenly, catching Lena off guard.

Lena’s heart pounds for a second, her secrets beating in rhythm to it. She has an idea of what Kara might tell her, because although it’s Supergirl in the stitched suit and House of El's coat of arms on her chest, it’s Kara’s bright, honest face that turns back to her, twinkling with the beginnings of a hope that Lena hasn’t seen in weeks.

In spite of everything, Lena smiles. For the first time in days, it feels like everything might be okay. She sits back a little to give Kara some room. “Of course,” she says, and though the words are on her tongue, she has to take a second to adjust to the new, strange sensation of speaking them aloud. Then, “You can tell me anything, Kara.”

  
  
  
  


There are hours spent through the night, Kara speaking of Krypton and the name Zor-El, of a family she’d had and lost and found and lost again. Of a home on Earth, discovered in a place and then in the people that surrounded her. Of Red Kryptonite, to which Lena feels herself physically recoil, because the thought of Kara or Supergirl losing herself to rage and darkness was a thought too violent to consider. She speaks of love and loss and finding herself, and Lena wonders if she’s still working through the last part, even now.

Lena, too, has secrets. She is afraid, because these secrets have insulated her for years, kept her company when she had nothing but scorn and cruelty to raise her. The deeper secrets still yearn to be let out, and when Lena looks to Kara, she finds she’s no longer afraid to release them.

 

 

Later, when Kara presses tearfully into her, mouth against hers, Lena thinks this may have all been worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> you're all welcome to come cry with me on tumblr about it. I have too many emotions, too.


End file.
